Mirabilus said icily, pulling out the dagger and drawing it over the skin of his arm without a flinch. The dagger’s pommel began to glow red. “I will link my life with yours with the Art of Ink and Life, drain your power and add it to my own. It will be done now as in centuries past by the Children of the Ba’alat of Gebal.”
I swallowed, clenching my hands tightly. I could feel the mana building in my hands, but underneath the stinging pitch it had nowhere to go and the skin of my hands got hotter and hotter until it felt like it was burning fire.
“Oh, please, Dakota, build up the mana in the vessels on your hands until they burst,” he said, laughing—and something tickled the back of my mind. “It will only make my job easier, the flow faster. I will kill you, tonight, and then Buckhead, and Jinx, and then Alex—a pity for him, he had such potential.”
But I was ignoring him now, concentrating. Build up the mana in the vessels of your hands until they burst. What was wrong about how he said that?
“Sorry I’m late,” Transomnia said, hopping up to the podium nimbly and tossing down a hammer with a kind of glee. “Anything left for me, old man?”
And then it hit me. He’d hadn’t said the vessels in your hands, but on your hands.
“You can have all the blood,” Mirabilus said, grinning. “I just want the skin.”
Vessel was an old skindancer word for magical capacitor. He didn’t mean my blood vessels—he was talking about the magical marks on my palms and knuckles. The word was old, falling out of use in the 1800’s, used now only by faux-ancients like Wiccans… and true ancients like Mirabilus. If I was right about his use of such an old word, Mirabilus had extended his life a century or more with his life-draining tricks—and maybe, just maybe, he was like the Marquis, trapped in a prescientific view that saw magical tattoos as mystical lenses, projecting mana from living bodies into the air through their two-dimensional designs.
In that view, my hands were the biggest threat: with their flexible skin, they were my quickest source of power, whereas any other skindancing movement would be slower, giving him more than enough time to stab me in the back. With my hands coated with goo, all that power could do was burn out my skin, like black paper thrown over a light bulb.
But reality was more complicated: the line between air and skin, skin and flesh was blurry; each had its own capacity to carry mana— but a difference of degree, rather than kind. After all, a cell phone is just like a land line—once you realize the air can act like a wire.
I could use that coating of pitch, project the power of my tattoos inward, make my body like the air, to hold that power and release it. It might damn near kill me—but with the magic hidden away behind my skin, Mirabilus would never see it coming.
I had a chance, if I could only find a distraction.
“Every drop of blood in her body,” Transomnia said, breathing heavily. “Oh, yessss, juice of the forbidden fruit. I will enjoy defying the Lady Saffron again.”
But… he hadn’t defied Savannah before. He had practically been a rules lawyer, skirting what harm he could do to me without defying her ban. I twisted my neck to look at him, and he raised an eyebrow, eyes trying to communicate… something. He knew what he was saying was wrong. What the hell? What was I missing?
My eyes widened as I remembered it had been awfully easy to get in here—and yet Transomnia knew exactly how to shut me down. He just hadn’t told his guards.
“Maybe I’ll make Jinx my apertif before I feast on you, Dakota,” he hissed, leaning down close, his desperate face in opposition to his words; but when he leaned back where Mirabilus could see him, he was practically leering in hunger. “And Alex will make a nice palate cleanser before I have Buckhead for dessert—”
I writhed and squeezed my hands. The mana built up in them and fed back, burning my skin, sinking into my body, like I’d drunk an entire pot of hot coffee. I could feel the tingling start, rippling down my insides—but held on to the power, held onto it tight.
“Please burn out your hands trying to awaken your marks,” Mirabilus said, raising his dagger. “I’ll drink